Actually XML::Parser is one of several options (along with XML::LibXML and XML::SAX::PurePerl) if you want to create a module to process XML. Otherwise you should really use a layer on top of it. XML::Parser is pretty tricky and there are now a lot of much easier (and safer) to use modules: XML::Simple (for data-oriented XML), XML::XPath, XML::Twig, XML::GDOME (although the DOM is also tricky to use) or the SAX parsers (XML::LibXML or XML::SAX::PurePerl).